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美紀 (Miki), the main character from the Haunted Ice-cream chapter, was 21 years old So it wouldn’t be the first time the MC is not a child. She did look kind of childish in the pictures though…
Definitely planning to go back to it, but I’ll make it a priority if it was one of the best ones! Maybe I’ll read that this weekend instead of chapter 5
okay the reading gets a bit smoother after page 102/103-ish and many of the words were from next week’s reading so it was less horrifying than I initially thought
But returning to Ch 5 - I just want to check
p97, second line - …シャンプーをたのまれたお客の髪をごっそりぬいてしまった。
Did Noriyuki empty an entire container of shampoo on a customer’s head?
Also much 感謝 to @Kawazoe for the vocab list this week!
But first off, this chapter is kind of teaching me that I sort of guiltily love reading about trash characters? I’ve tried a couple of anime with trash protagonists and mostly can’t get behind them but I’m loving reading about this absolute arsehole. Perhaps it’s because I have some inkling she’s going to get her comeuppance? Or maybe they’re just not as viscerally grating on paper.
@Kyasurin that’s how I read it! I love how absurdly fun this book is. Everything is so over-the-top.
I think シャンプーをたのまれた is a relative clause modifying お客, and 髪 is a direct object of ぬいて (ぬく= to pull out). So I translated it as (Noriyuki) pulled out completely(or a lot of) the hair of a customer who requested a shampoo. I think the phrase just before it きょうはついつい手に力入り tells us that he used more force than usual.
Seems like it would take an awful lot of force to pull someone’s hair out but considering all the wild stuff that’s gone on in the previous stories maybe this is not so far fetched.
Stopping by to say I’ve read this week’s reading too. Interesting chapter so far. I love the MC, such an asshat
Also while it did start out with quite a few vocab I didn’t know, I actually thought it became easier as it went on. But I guess we’ll see with next week’s reading as well.
I have started reading. E-book person here. I was kind of proud of myself that I already managed to read 3 pages but looking at the vocab sheet, that equals like 1 page in the official book
The vocab sheet definetly helps a lot! Thank you! Would have taken me even longer without that…
I don’t think I will look up every unkown grammar point and vocab (that’s not on the sheet) as long as I can get the ghist of the sentence. Otherwise I think I’ll just get tired of looking everything up and get depressed seeing how slowly I progress…
Before reading any further, I just want to make sure that I get what’s going on…
The text is written in third person, right? I was a bit confused when suddenly 自分 was used but it can mean “himself” (instead of just “I”, “myself”)?
Summary
So the protagonist is Noriyuki, a hair dresser, 28 years old. He is depressed because he was scolded by his shop manager. He went to a kind of cosmetics/beauty/hair dresser school (or whatever such schools are called), graduated and afterwards got a job at a leading beauty salon, all thanks to his aunt who is well known in the beauty world.
At the shop he’s working at, senpais as well as kouhais are all tired of him and don’t like him because of his attitudes (e.g. he’s not listening to his senpais advice and teaching, and he’s acting all big in front of his kouhais). But he himself isn’t aware of his bad behaviour.
There’s no progress for him because he’s only allowed to wash hair and clean the shop (?). Whereas his classmates from school are shop managers or independent already.
Speaking of the first page, the last sentence on p96,
…独立してりっぱにやっているやつらもいる というのに 。
I was trying to figure out what というのに at the end of the sentence meant. DOIJG doesn’t seem to give a good explanation when used this way but someone who apparently is a native speaker gave this explanation on stack exchange:
「~というのに!」, or more commonly and colloquially 「~って言って(い)るのに!」, is a fairly common way of expressing one’s frustration or irritation , meaning “I’m telling you~~ (and why can’t you understand?)!” It has almost the same meaning and usage as 「~~ってば!」
Not sure if this explains it adequately but I guess for now, it seems OK. Anyone have any thoughts about this?